


The Assassin's Hand

by DracoMaleficium



Category: The Borgias (2011)
Genre: Comfort, Drabble, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 22:54:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DracoMaleficium/pseuds/DracoMaleficium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cesare knows one thing for sure - Micheletto will always be there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Assassin's Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [exmachinarium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exmachinarium/gifts).



> Written for a drabble meme on my lj for exmachinarium's prompt: Cesare and Micheletto, the aftermath of "The Borgias in Love".

_You never forget your first._

Micheletto meant it when he said it and already Cesare could tell this was true. His hands still shook feverishly despite his desperate efforts to stay composed, and he had to reach out to touch the solid stone of the houses they passed just to feel grounded in reality enough to keep walking. He hardly noticed the downpour anymore, even though his wet clothes bore him down and made each new step that much harder. He was only glad the rain had washed the blood away. 

_That bastard had insulted his mother. And now he was dead._

In the darkness, sliced time and time again by dagger-sharp raindrops, he could hear Micheletto’s steps splashing through the streets behind him. He was shadowing him silently, as usual. Strange, how accustomed Cesare’d grown to hearing those footsteps behind him, soft, trustworthy, constant…

He depended on those footsteps now. They anchored him to this world now as much as the stone walls he occasionally used to support himself against; they uplifted him with the strength his feeble faith could never match. 

It was not God who walked with young Cardinal Borgia that night, when the river once again flowed crimson with blood. It was Micheletto. 

And it was the assassin’s hand which steadied him as Cesare stumbled slightly in the mood, close to slipping; it was his iron grip which kept him standing, and which squeezed, once, in silent, profound assurance.

Cesare glanced up at him, then, his lips trembling. Micheletto’s face was curtained with shadows and distorted by the rain, but he was there. He was always there. 

And always would be.

They moved on into the night without a word, the assassin’s solid, bracing hand still on the cardinal’s shoulder, as the rain chased the blood through the gutters of Rome.


End file.
